News

Several faculty in the College of Natural Sciences have been named the recipients of University-wide awards for their efforts to motivate and educate students at The University of Texas at Austin.

Dean's Honored Graduate is the highest honor awarded to graduating seniors in the College of Natural Sciences. Honorees exhibit excellence in the classroom as well as substantial achievement in scientific research, an independent intellectual pursuit, or exceptional service and leadership to the college and university. These outstanding students are among the graduating seniors also receiving College of Natural Sciences Distinctions this year.

Computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have taught an artificial intelligence agent how to do something that usually only humans can do—take a few quick glimpses around and infer its whole environment, a skill necessary for the development of effective search-and-rescue robots that one day can improve the effectiveness of dangerous missions.

Peter Stone, a professor of computer science at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the Minnie Stevens Piper Teaching Award, which celebrates outstanding postsecondary teaching.

Each year, Texas Parents honors a male and female Outstanding Student recipient and four Outstanding Student finalists who demonstrate exceptional leadership, scholarship, character and service. This year, all six are pursuing majors in the College of Natural Sciences, including the two award winners, Colton Becker and Jacqueline Gibson.

One thing that sets humans apart from even the smartest of artificially intelligent machines is the ability to understand, not just the definitions of words and phrases, but the deepest meanings embedded in human language.

Three faculty members from the College of Natural Sciences have received distinguished Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards totaling $1.6 million over 5 years from the National Science Foundation.

University of Texas at Austin computer science professor Kristen Grauman was elected a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a lifetime honor.

Before she was winning awards at UT Austin, computer science sophomore Chineye Emeghara was teaching herself to code in high school with resources she discovered online. Later, on a trip to Nigeria, where her mother lived before immigrating to the U.S., she realized that she could apply her interest in technology to improve the lives of others.

In a New York Times article and on the Bay Area airwaves, University of Texas at Austin computer scientists are speaking out about the increasing demand for classes – and how the department, which is top-ten ranked, is coping with the challenge.